[Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child

[Jean Burgess]

See also the Guardian just now: "Poverty-stricken Rwanda puts its faith and future into the wide wired world:

A mobile in every pocket is motto of tiny country aiming to be hub of technology"

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1834623,00.html

And for the political economists, this bit further down the page: 

"Meanwhile, the government is offering incentives to attract private investment. The home of the senate, a modern seven-storey building, is being turned into an "ICT park" for hi-tech companies that will receive free rent and utilities."

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 11:14:09 +0100
>From: David Brake <d.r.brake at lse.ac.uk>  
>Subject: Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child  
>To: AoIR mailing list <air-l-aoir.org at listserv.aoir.org>
>
>I was just listening to Negroponte talking about the OLPC at the TED  
>Talks back in February and he said to my astonishment, "When you see  
>that kind of thing [referring to favourable reports of trials of  
>conventional laptops after 3.5 years in Maine], this is not something  
>you have to test - the days of pilot projects are over. When people  
>say 'well we'd like to do three or four thousand in our country to  
>see how it works' - screw you. Go to the back of the line - someone  
>else will do it and then when you figure out that this works you can  
>join as well."
>
>I know that he has now resigned as chair of the Media Lab to run the  
>OLPC project and he is understandably passionate about it but to say  
>that because of a few small-scale pilots of different kinds in  
>different developed and developing world countries, there can be no  
>doubt his radically different design of laptop will work in any given  
>country is just irresponsible.
>
>I only hope this is merely hyperbole on his part and not typical of  
>the attitude of the whole organization. It seems that Nigeria has  
>decided to gamble that Negroponte is right (http://allafrica.com/ 
>stories/200607120369.html).
>
>(See http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/2006/06/the-100-laptop- 
>debate/ for more on the OLPC project).
>
>Incidentally, I find I am listening to more and more academic  
>podcasts and I am not sure how to cite them.  At the moment I guess  
>that this one should be treated as a conference proceeding -  
>something like this:
>
>Negroponte, N. (2006) "Ted Talk: Nicholas Negroponte". in New York,  
>February, 2006,   http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/
>
>But that doesn't tell you it is a podcast and crucially it doesnt  
>tell you that the part I cited is 5 minutes, 42 seconds in. This  
>useful guide to Harvard citation http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/ 
>using/harvard_system.html says BS:5605:1990 http://www.mamc.ac.in/ 
>British.pdf doesnt include recommendations for electronic sources. Is  
>there an advanced Harvard Style Lab somewhere coming up with  
>standards for this stuff? What would you do? Should I just make up my  
>own style?
>
>---
>David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London  
>School of Economics & Political Science
><http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ 
>mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm>
>Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/  
>(personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog)
>Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ 
>dealingwithemail/>
>callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)
>
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